Monday, 28 February 2011

Today's QotD comes from our Sunday quiz-mistress Josephine, who for the record is a lovely woman, and who is about to willingly embark upon an exceptionally difficult career I chose to leave. I wouldn't want anyone to think this I was getting at her. However:

"Ah, you're probably all Liberal Democrats, since I already know you're all academics."

Saturday, 26 February 2011

Preparation: Pour the Schnapps into a shot glass. Pour the Baileys in afterwards, very slowly. Add the two drops of grenadine.

General Comments: This is absolutely gorgeous - a lovely mix of sweetness, creaminess and kick, particularly if the Schnapps and/or the glass (preferably both) have been chilled. It's certainly one of those shooter cocktails which is dangerously moreish.

Plus, it looks awesome (for a horror fan like me, natch); it has a great name, which works as both a description and a disclaimer; it's quick to make; and it's sufficiently strong (and cheap) to satisfy the most ardent booze-hound. Brilliant.

Update: Whoops! I used the wrong method to calculate the price. I've reduced the score accordingly, but it's still pretty cheap, all things considered (you can make about about a dozen of these from a single bottle of Archers and four tablespoons of Baileys).

Having spent this evening at Stockton's "Ale And Arty" beer festival (held in an arts centre - DO YOU SEE?), I thought it was worth briefly describing the ciders and perries sampled (yes, I had no ales, because they are shit, and if you like them you are shit).

Black Dragon

Apparently this is a cider matured in oak barrels. I say, it's some kind of bizarre mixture of booze and cheddar. Obviously, I've been arguing for years that alcoholic cheese is the greatest idea since sliced pornography, but I think Black Dragon serves as proof that some things should remain fantasies, rather than being dragged kicking and screaming into reality.

Blakeney Red Perry

This was allegedly the sweetest drink available in the cider/perry corner. It's certainly sweeter than the Black Dragon, but it's hard to dispel the feeling that this is because they poured a barrel of sugar into it whilst I wasn't looking. Oddly, it actually works. Cheese + booze? Piss off. Cheese + booze + sugar? Sign me up for that shit. Funny old world, innit?

Moores Perry

Bizarrely, despite being a perry, this was the winner of tonight's award for "Most likely to be mistaken for apple juice". It's pretty good, as well; just the right balance of sweetness and tartness.

Gwynt y Ddraig Perry

This should have been gorgeous. It's light, it's sweet, it's fairly strong - just how I like my perry (and my women). There's a fly in the ointment, though. The guy who poured it for me warned of a "sulphuric bite". What he meant was that this is the best pint of perry you'll ever drink which has been previously farted into by an incontinent hippopotamus. Being a total noob at all this, I have no idea as to whether this fartelbrau situation is intentional, or simply the perry equivalent of "corking". What I do know is that Fartelbrau is a brilliant name for a beer, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.

Green Valley Scrumpy

It's scrumpy. What do you expect? All scrumpy is the same. People pretend it isn't, so as to seem superior, but all scrumpy is exactly the same. Like air-fresheners. Or Italians.

Port Wine of Glastonbury

We have a winner! It's pink and orange, which means it looks like some kind of breakfast drink. It tastes like one too, and is therefore awesome. Anything that can get me off my tits by lunchtime but be at least borderline socially acceptable is OK by me.

This concludes my latest foray into CAMRA festivals (I should also note that The Other Half let me try her Dragon's Breath, which for the sake of completeness I should note tastes like sewage mixed with washin- up liquid). Clearly, if I find a similar festival in the midlands, I shall review that as well.

Thursday, 24 February 2011

Just as a follow-up to the previous post, it's worth noting one small point about Franklin's proposed law (which will never, ever pass, by the way; not that that makes it any less vile). Amongst the sheer insanity of another attempt to punish women for having wombs, and the brain-boggling madness of not being able to rule out the possibility that a miscarriage will carry the death sentence, we should note that Franklin has no more respect for the legal system than he does for uppity wimmins:

Under Rep. Franklin's bill, HB 1, women who miscarry could become felons if they cannot prove that there was "no human involvement whatsoever in the causation" of their miscarriage.

The original MJ article points out how difficult it is to determine or even define "human involvement", but that's not what I wanted to note. What got me was the idea that Franklin has written "guilty until proven innocent" directly into the law. I can't even begin to describe how lunatic that is. I don't know whether such a law would circumvent "innocent until proven guilty", or whether it would cause some kind of spectacular infinite logic loop when the first case came to trial (I doubt the Georgia Supreme Court would accept this law for that very reason), but either way, you have to stand in awe of the sheer level of dickishness being portrayed here. "If you're unborn child dies, you'll have to prove to us that you didn't kill it!"

My mother, like so many women, went through a miscarriage. It was comparatively early in the pregnancy (only a few weeks after she started telling people she was pregnant, I think, though I was very young at the time, so the details are shaky), and I think that helped with regard to the emotional fallout. Still, it wasn't exactly fun-times; even as a four year old I could work that out.

I guess that's what make four year old SpaceSquid different from strangely-difficult-to-determine year old Bobby Franklin. Where I saw a woman in pain, determined to get past her loss and move on (my younger brother was born not much more than a year later), Franklin sees a crime scene.

With apologies for the delay - there were considerable technical issues that Chris B has been struggling manfully against - we present issue #11 of Panel Talk. This time round we discuss Mike Carey's The Unwritten. Chris thinks it's the best Vertigo comic since Preacher. I actually think Preacher is overrated, but replace it with Lucifer (also by Mike Carey, as regular readers of this blog will know), and I think that's true. This is a book everyone should read, but I'll let the podcast explain why.

Tuesday, 22 February 2011

Turn away, ye faint of heart or intolerant of spoilers! For I, your intrepid SpaceSquid, have at great cost acquired a secret document detailing exactly what will happen in the remaining episodes of Being Human's third year!

Episode 6: Nina learns of George's tryst with Daisy last year, and breaks up with him in disgust. She also learns that a werewolf's gestation period is the same as a dogs, and will give birth just before the next full moon. Meanwhile, George's younger sister Jessica is tragically killed, and her ghost begins to haunt him.

Episode 7. Nina gives birth. Mitchell and Annie split up. Mitchell attempts to recover by embarking on an impressive spree of loveless one-night stands. Annie decides her attempts to help both normal people and vampires have been in vain, and decides to focus on werewolves; singing bad songs about unloved domestic animals in seedy lycanthrope bars. Herrick begins to show signs of improvement, and he and Jessica begin to bond as fellow newcomers, a fact they are desperate to hide from George.

Episode 8. Nina and George continue to try to maintain separate love lives whilst looking after their baby. The housemates discover Jessica and Herrick have started a relationship; causing George to fly into a rage. Mitchell begins to realise his fear of Nina has nothing to do with the prophecy, and instead represents repressed feelings towards her that he can no longer hide. All of this comes to a shocking head during an impromptu house holiday to Barbados.

This season will then conclude with the shock announcement that the show will return next year with the new title Friends: The Shit Years: The Next Generation. Steven Moffat announces three days later that Season 6 of Doctor Who will now be called Does Anyone Call Coupling A Modern Classic Yet?

Monday, 21 February 2011

Preparation: Pour the grenadine, Triple Sec, sloe gin and cream, in that order, into a cordial glass.

General Comments: This is a difficult one to judge. It's ABV is around 15%, which makes it perhaps a little on the weak side for a shooter cocktail. On the other hand, mix it in too large a quantity (the photo above uses twice as much as the recipe I've given) and it's almost impossible to avoid feeling that you're just drinking cream, at least for the first few mouthfuls. I reckon - and this is yet untried - that the recipe I've given is the right amount.

Assuming the volume issue can be dealt with, this is delicious cocktail. It tastes, not surprisingly, a great deal like its namesake, all fruit and cream and loveliness. It's certainly another drink to file under "is this really alcoholic?" The cream makes me suspect that one very quickly reaches the point where you decide you've had enough, but in moderation, it's very nice. It also gets points for a nice look, and for reminding me of the desserts of my youth. This might strengthen the impression that this entire exercise can be boiled down to the variables of "sweetness" and "nostalgia", but I don't think a writer should shy away from their biases, so long as they recognise them for what they are.

Sunday, 20 February 2011

Watched this with The Other Half last night, since I figured something billed as a mathematical horror film would be just the thing for us.

It's certainly an interesting curiosity. Good films about mathematicians are hard to come by (and no, A Beautiful Mind doesn't count), and this manages to succeed, at least for a little while. Not only does the main characters' preening, arrogant approach ring true, the differences in their philosophies works too - "Galois" and "Hilbert" are obsessed with the beauty of theory for theory's sake, but "Pascal" sees no point in anything without direct practical application ("Oliva" is just there to be pretty, so far as I can see). There is also some fun to be had in trying to solve the various riddles they come across faster than the characters can themselves (though none are particularly difficult, and they get less interesting as the film goes on), and that works even better because you're trying to solve those small mysteries whilst simultaneously trying to put together the pieces of the larger puzzle: why are these four people trapped in a room together?

Ultimately, though, that's where the film comes apart. The film can't maintain it's internal logic. The solution (or at least one distinctly plausible solution) to their predicament is obvious given the tools at their disposal and the eventual explanation of their predicament. We've seen this in plenty of other horror films, of course (though in truth Fermat's Room should be more fairly considered a thriller) - we've all shouted "Why don't you just....!" at the screen at some point or other. What makes this so deeply frustrating here though is that the whole film is about how these people are ruthlessly logical problem-solving machines. They don't get to come down with a case of the third-act stupids.

Unless, of course, the implicit idea is that mathematicians are, for all their imagination and/or processing power, completely fucking useless. In which case fair point, I guess.

Saturday, 19 February 2011

I am pleased to announce that as of 2pm this afternoon, I have a new flat! I shall be transferring my decrepit frame to it at the start of April, but I thought I'd share a few pictures of the new domicile. This is the outside of my block of flats:

These are some internal pictures:

This is part of the view from the living room window:

And this is Kenilworth High Street's giant rotating clitoris.

I am still not looking forward to leaving Durham, but I'm definitely liking the idea of living in Kenilworth much more now.

Thursday, 17 February 2011

(I decided in the end that I couldn't find anywhere to put the titles without having to cover up some of Steven's gorgeous pictures - clearly an intolerable act of vandalism). I'm sure we can solve the problem next time).

Tuesday, 15 February 2011

The first comic strip is pretty much ready to go, but given how gorgeous it looks, and given it will usually be smaller so as to fit in the strip, I thought it was only fair to devote an entire post to Steven's title page.

I promise I'll leave the topic alone after this post, but it occurs to me that, if we make the assumption McArdle really was looking for answers on this subject rather than pushing a party line, then the process here is revealing. Having spent a few minutes putting together a badly considered post questionable research, McArdle spends some time soaking in the bile of those that disagree with her. She then takes the most ridiculous and unsavoury arguments presented and claims them as proof that what she suspected was right.

Her process to conclusion works as follows, then. Write something stupid, then use the stupid that it generates in response to argue that the case is closed (because as we all know, people who claim to be academics who comment on unconvincing blog posts = a representative academic sample). I mention this because it's a very common method of self-reinforcement, and so it should be noted and objected to whenever it arises.

Given how down I was on Megan McArdle's terrible previous article on potential anti-conservative bias, I thought it only fair to note that her follow-up is actually a lot better, to start with at least.

Most of what she writes in the first half of the article is entirely fair. She's right that bias does not have to be intentional, and she's certainly right that there's little point in arguing "I know I'm not biased because I've looked into my heart". I'm sure (though I haven't checked) that there were plenty of weak arguments put forward in response to her previous post.

But - and you knew there was one coming - the problem is she is fighting the weak arguments. The stronger one - that this is a complex issue that needs a rigorous and intelligent approach - is left entirely unconsidered. She even references this issue with regard to the Republican/conservative conflation, and then just bats it aside as though it's obviously stupid.

It isn't. Moreover, it's central to the point. McArdle talks at length about the possibility that conservatives might feel out of place in academia but never makes the logical inference that this means a public display of hands is a stupid way to test the proportion of conservatives. What exactly will be shown? That there aren't very many conservatives? That they are made to feel uncomfortable by their fellows? Or that they feel uncomfortable for other reasons (i.e. they already believe what Haidt claims he's proved). The issue here isn't whether bias is a complex subject - it clearly is. It's why McArdle can believe the problem is complex but the diagnosis is simple.

Monday, 14 February 2011

I've always loved Valentine's Day. Well, that isn't entirely true. Back when I was a lovelorn teenager constantly unable to understand why women weren't interested in a squeaky-voiced physical wreck, I disliked it intensely. Hell, I stillcelebrate St Skeletor's Day, though mainly because the cards are so much more fun.

Over the years, though, I've found myself appreciating it more and more, irrespective of whether I've been in a relationship at the time. If your anniversary is the birthday of your love affair, then Valentine's Day is its Christmas - one day set aside for the entirety of society to simultaneously celebrate how amazing it is that the person you love allows you to follow them around without calling the police.

It is not, I concede, a perfect metaphor (especially for those who, unlike me, impart religious importance to the Yuletide season). People might think Christmas has gotten too commercial, but common opinion has it that Valentine's Day started out that way. It's also true that Christmas is (in theory) a time for families, which one would hope are a more constant beast than one's romantic dalliances.

Even so, there are people out there who either lack families entirely, or (for whatever reason) consider them blights upon their very lives. We can understand why these people exist, and why they might hate Christmas (or at least choose not to celebrate it), but generally speaking we don't use them as arguments for cancelling Christmas entirely (something which in any case can only be done by Baby Jesus or Alan Rickman).

I say: ignore the nay-sayers! Let those as yet unattached do as they will! Valentine's Day is a time of celebration! It's probably not a time of actually going out, because people are bastards and everything is expensive, but is a night in with a good film and plenty of cuddles too much to ask? I say thee NAY!!! /Romantic Thor

Besides, if not for Valentine's Day I wouldn't have had the hilarious experience of trying to explain to the Waterstones staff exactly what I was searching for and get the response "Just how old is the child in question?"

Nuts to you, Waterstones staff! Must one be a child to realise that this book is the most awesome one ever written? It has baby aardvarks! Baby freakingaardvarks, people!

Tonight, it's just me, The Other Half, some cocktails, and Grosse Point Blank, my choice of non-romantic romance film. Everyone have fun!

Thursday, 10 February 2011

I had considered spending a few hours tearing this McArdle post apart for a bit of fun, but - fittingly enough - I find I'm too busy being an academic to smack it down in full. So let's have the short version instead. Anyone with any claim whatsoever to experience of the American political climate who argues that conservatives are under-represented in US academic institutions because not many academics vote Republican needs to fuck off. Not just shut up. Fuck off. Fuck off from the blogohedron, and from public life entirely.

Seriously. Off you go. Bye now. Come back when you realise that if there is any place in the States where being a conservative and choosing to vote Republican are different, it's the places where people have trained themselves to actually understand what the fuck is going on. There are significant numbers of conservative Democrats, and far more conservative Independents. Mixing the terms up when it suits you is pathetically sloppy.

Also on the subject of understanding what is going on, McArdle might want to consider her own grasp of, y'know, anything:

41% of the troops identify as Republicans (down from 62% just seven years ago), while 32% identify as independent, and presumably, 27% identify as Democrats.

To reiterate: fuck off. You're supposed to be an economics expert but you've never heard of a "Don't Know" or "No Response" column? I suppose we should give McArdle some kudos for at least being able to sum to one hundred, at least.

I don't want to imply that this apparent political disparity isn't an interesting topic to consider. Nor am I suggesting that there cannot be any kind of bias occurring somewhere. I'd like to see some genuine research on this. This isn;t it. Indeed, were there people who believed that conservatives were unsuited for academic work, this kind of lazy bullshit would certainly lend credence to their position.

Which, of course, is the problem: McArdle is trying to argue that liberal academics look down on the skills of conservatives whilst demonstrating with great clarity just how poor her own skills are. Her intellectual laziness, sloppy inferences, and track record with refusing to admit mistakes or reconsider errors are exactly the flaws a good academic must avoid at all costs.

Which kind of brings us to the $64 000 question: does Ms McArdle consider herself of academic fibre? Because if she does - and her "U cant scare me cos all my fameelz academics FUR REELZ"-style of non-argument/defense mechanism implies that she does (and moreover that she considers academic skill to be hereditary) - then her entire position is based on a total failure to understand how academia works, and what makes someone suited or otherwise to pursue it.

On the other hand, if she is willing to admit she couldn't hack it in any situation where her editors would actually have to pay attention to the quality of her arguments, then whilst that would be nice (and a rare flash of self-awareness), it would immediately raise the question as to what in God's name she's doing as the Atlantic's business and economics editor?.

Unless she can answer that, dear readers, then I think we all know what it is she can do.

Answers are up now. It's a shame there weren't more entries; I figured this one would be a perfect opportunity for my adoring fans to show their superiority to the decrepit bunch that show up in the pub once a month. Hopefully we can get a goodly number of contributions last month, for my last... quiz... EVER! [1]

Tuesday, 8 February 2011

I am ashamed to confess that I had no idea Being Human had even returned to our screens until I happened to hear it mentioned on TV on Sunday night. Since I am dedicated to my job of writing bollocks about anything even tangentially connected with horror/geekery, however, I immediately fired up my trusty iPlayer and got to work.

Long-term readers will remember that I had a number of issues regarding the show's second season, though ultimately swung in its favour (with various significant caveats). So how are things going this time around? Find out below the jump, but beware: spoilers abound!

Sunday, 6 February 2011

Issue #10 of Panel Talk has been set loose upon an unsuspecting internet. This time round we discuss Infinite Crisis (see more here), which leaves DC 0 for 2 in their attempt to not make me think they suck.

Wednesday, 2 February 2011

Heya, peeps! It's time for another round of red-hot quz action! Since I'll be moving to Warwick in eight weeks or so, this is liable to be the penultimate quz for a while. I still plan to write the occasional round to send back home, but as far as complete articles go, it might be a while.

Still, let's not dwell on such matters! There's still two quzzes to come; and here is one of them. The top three scores this week were 34, 31, and 28, but I'm sure you can beat that. I've also once again included the bonus round; only a perfect score will win you the (entirely abstract) beer tokens this time.

Round 1: Words

(Each word is an anagram of the previous word, with one letter added; the first word is four letters long).

1. To pass, flow or ooze gradually through a porous substance. Seep

2. A period, spell or bout of indulgence of ones whims or cravings. Spree

3. To persistently bother or trouble another with minor annoyances. Pester

4. An interval of relief. Respite

5. A class of cold-blooded animals which lay their eggs on land. Reptiles

Round 2: Blue

1. Which song is cited as the biggest selling 12” of all time, but was not eligible for gold disc status as its label was not a member of the BPI organisation? "Blue Monday"

2. What kind of animal is a Russian blue? A cat

3. The 1980 film Blues Brothers held for eighteen years the world record for having destroyed the greatest number of what object in one film? Carsa

4. Who defined “C” as a “Big blue wobbly thing that mermaids live in” during an attempt to rewrite the first English dictionary overnight? Baldrick

5. In 1997 the chess-playing computer Deep Blue won a six game match by two wins to one with three draws against which holder of the title “classical world chess champion“? Garry Kasparov

Round 3: Ants

1. Who was born Stuart Leslie Goddard in 1954? Adam Ant

2. Which kind of ants include living larders in their colonies in the form of fellow ants with enormously swollen abdomens, which can form part of the diet of various Australian Aboriginal peoples? The honey(pot) ant

3. Who provided the voice for Z in the 1998 animated film Antz? Woody Allen

4. Who wrote The Electric Ant, written in 1969, in which a man discovers his entire reality is being created by punch cards being fed into his chest? Phillip K. Dick

5. What kind of creature was constantly trying to eat Charlie Ant in a run of United Artist cartoons, in which both characters were played by John Bryner using impersonations of Jackie Mason and Dean Martin? A blue aardvark

Round 4: Occupants of Interplanetary Craft

1. What was the name of Klatu’s robot companion in the film The Day the Earth Stood Still? Gort

2. Who replaced Blake as captain of the Liberator at the start of Blake's 7’s third season? Avon

3. Who had the role of Command Module Pilot during the Apollo 11 mission? Michael Collins

4. Which former sports commentator is now best known for insisting that intelligent reptiles from the constellation of Draco travelled to Earth hundreds of millennia ago to steal our monatomic gold? David Icke

5. In which Arthur C Clarke book does a fifty-kilometre long spaceship enter the solar system, resulting in the solar survey vessel Endeavour being dispatched to investigate? Rendezvous With Rama

Round 5: Bananas

1. In March 2006 Cyclone Larry hit which country, destroying over 80% of the national banana crop, losses which could not quickly be replaced due to stringent import laws preventing bananas being brought in from elsewhere? Australia

2. An isotope of which element occurs naturally in bananas, making them more radioactive than the average fruit? Potassium

3. The Banana Splits, an early attempt to mix live action and animation, were created in the 1960s by Hanna Barbera, and consisted of Fleegle the dog, Bingo the gorilla, Snorky the elephant, and a lion that went by what name? Drooper

4. The most common exported banana is the Cavendish Banana, which was cultivated to replace which other form of banana that was almost wiped out by Panama Disease in the early and middle 20th Century? Gros Michel

5. What was the name of the schoolboy underwent an amazing transformation whenever he ate a banana, becoming Bananaman; ever alert for the call to action? Eric Wimp

Round 6: York

1. At the confluence of which two rivers is York situated? The Ouse and the Foss

2. What name did the Romans give to the city when they founded it in 71 AD? Eboracum

3. A popular tourist destination in York, the teashop "Bettys" is part of a company with the full name of "Bettys and Taylors of…" where? Harrogate

4. The capital of York County in Virginia, Yorktown saw the last major land battle in the American Revolutionary War, which ended in British defeat and the surrender of which leading general? General Lord Charles Cornwallis

5. The word “Yorker” part of the standard terminology of which sport? Cricket

General Knowledge

1. (Watership Down) What is a lendri? A badger

2. A first folio of which writer’s work was stolen from Bishop Cosin’s Library on Palace Green in 1998, and returned last year? Shakespeare

3. Which chemical element has the abbreviation Cs? Caesium

4. According to Rudyard Kipling, where was the sailor of infinite-resource-and-sagacity whilst he was dancing hornpipes where he shouldn’t? Inside a whale

5. On Saturday the 15th of January I turned 31. On what day in 1980 was I born? Tuesday

6. Which two colours can be found on the Cornish flag? Black and white

7. With what weapon was the Jabberwock dispatched? Vorpal Sword

8. What is the English name for the Indian snack known variously as chiwda, chevdo, or chevda? Bombay mix

9. The British sailor James Weddell gave his name to a sea to the north west of which continent? Antarctica

10. What fictional monster is made from clay and animated by carving the word "Truth" into their "flesh"? A golem

Bonus Round

(Below are the names of five bands. All I want from you is their studio album which appears first alphabetically, not counting the words “A” or “The”.)